Remix.run Logo
tshaddox 4 days ago

Advocates of Chesterton’s Fence tend to miss that they’re applying selective pressure to favor systems that fail to document (or outright obscure) their purpose.

Of course, the much more obvious flaw of Chesterton’s Fence is that it trivially reduces to status quo bias.

jmcqk6 4 days ago | parent [-]

I don't think you've understood the lesson here. Chesterton's fence is not about keeping systems in place. It is about how you approach changing the system.

tshaddox 2 days ago | parent [-]

I understand it. Just like the precautionary principle, it’s bad epistemology and bad advice.

It doesn’t provide any guidance on how much research is necessary before removing any specific fence. The most charitable interpretation is “don’t remove a fence until you do a sufficient amount of research into why the fence was built,” which is tautological and useless.